RAW vs JPEG: what a RAW file is, and when it matters
A raw file holds the ingredients; a JPEG is the finished dish. Here is what each actually gives you, what it costs, and how to decide which one your photography needs.
Two photographs of the same sunset at the Brighton bathing boxes, taken a second apart on the same camera. On the back of the screen they look identical. At home, in the editing software, they are not. Pull the highlights down on the first and the pale sky near the sun turns grey and flat, with a hard edge where the detail simply stops. Do the same on the second and the colour comes back: peach, then gold, then a faint band of pink that was there all along. The first file was a JPEG. The second was raw.
That is the whole RAW vs JPEG debate in one picture. It is also only half the story, because the JPEG was ready to post from the car park and the raw file needed ten minutes of work before anyone could see it.
What is a RAW file?
A raw file is the data recorded by the sensor, with very little processing applied. It is not really a picture yet. It is closer to a set of ingredients: brightness readings from millions of photosites, plus notes about the camera settings you used. To see it as an image, software has to interpret it, decide the colours, apply contrast and sharpening, and render a viewable file. The preview on the back of your camera is itself a small JPEG made from those ingredients.
Every camera brand uses its own raw format, such as CR3, NEF, ARW or RAF, and some use Adobe's open DNG format. Editing software needs to support your specific camera, which occasionally means a short wait, or a software update, when a brand-new model comes out.
A JPEG is the finished dish. The camera takes the same sensor data, applies its own choices about white balance, contrast, saturation, sharpening and noise reduction, then compresses the result and throws away the data it decided you did not need. The file is smaller, universal and ready to use. It is also final in a way a raw file is not.
RAW vs JPEG: the real differences
The first is bit depth. A JPEG stores 8 bits per colour channel, which gives 256 levels of brightness for each of red, green and blue. Most cameras record raw at 12 or 14 bits: 4,096 or 16,384 levels per channel. You will never see that difference in a straight, unedited image. You see it the moment you push an edit hard. Brighten the shadows of a JPEG by two stops and smooth gradients, like a sky or a wall, can break into visible bands. The raw file has far more tonal steps to spread out, so it bends further before it breaks.
The second is highlight and shadow recovery. A JPEG clips highlights at the point the camera's tone curve decided was white. The raw file usually holds a little more information above that point, often enough to recover detail in a bright sky or a white wedding dress, depending on the sensor and how far you overexposed. Shadows behave the same way: raw files from modern sensors can be lifted a long way before noise takes over.
The third is white balance. In a raw file, white balance is just an instruction, recorded as metadata and applied during conversion. Change it later and nothing is lost; the result is exactly what you would have got had you set it correctly in the first place. In a JPEG, the colour has been baked into the pixels. You can shift it, but correcting a badly wrong white balance, such as the deep orange of an old incandescent lamp in a living room, often leaves skin tones muddy.
Then there is file size. Raw files are commonly two to four times the size of a high-quality JPEG from the same camera, depending on resolution and compression settings. That means more memory cards, more hard-drive space, slower transfers and, on some cameras, a shorter burst before the buffer fills.
What you cannot do is shoot JPEG and then expect raw's flexibility when the exposure goes wrong.
Should I shoot RAW?
If you intend to edit your photographs, yes. Raw gives you room to fix mistakes and make choices after the fact, and it is the format serious photographers default to for landscapes, portraits, low light and anything with a difficult mix of bright and dark.
But raw is not a moral position, and JPEG is not a beginner's mistake. A well-exposed JPEG with the correct white balance is an excellent file. Modern cameras make very good JPEGs, and many working photographers deliver them directly, particularly in sport and news, where speed matters more than latitude.
JPEG is perfectly sensible when:
- You will not edit, and want to share the images straight away.
- You are shooting long bursts of action and need the camera's buffer to keep up.
- You are photographing family events where the light is easy and the volume is high.
- Storage is limited, for instance on a long trip without a laptop.
- You like your camera's colour profiles, such as film simulations, and have the exposure right in-camera.
What you cannot do is shoot JPEG and then expect raw's flexibility when the exposure goes wrong. If the sky over the bay blows out in a JPEG, it has gone.
RAW+JPEG: the best of both?
Most cameras can record both at once. You get a ready-to-share JPEG and a raw file in reserve for the frames worth working on. It is a good halfway house while you are learning, because you can compare the camera's interpretation with your own edit and understand what the camera was deciding for you.
The cost is space and speed: you are writing two files per frame, so cards fill faster and bursts shorten. Many photographers use RAW+JPEG for a few months, notice they only ever open the raw files, and switch over completely. Others notice the opposite, and save themselves the storage.
One practical detail: if you use a picture style, film simulation or black-and-white mode, it applies to the JPEG and the preview only. The raw file keeps the full colour data. That surprises people when their black-and-white frames reappear in colour on import.
Phones: ProRAW and DNG
Smartphones complicate the picture. Recent iPhone Pro models offer Apple ProRAW, and many Android phones can save DNG raw files through the built-in camera or third-party apps. Phone raw formats vary. Some are close to a traditional single-frame raw file. Others, including ProRAW, combine the phone's multi-frame computational processing with raw-style editing latitude, so you keep some of the phone's noise reduction and dynamic range work while gaining control over white balance and exposure.
The trade-off is the same as on a camera, only sharper: phone raw files are much larger than the phone's standard HEIC or JPEG images, and they look flatter until edited. For most everyday phone photography, the standard format is excellent. For a sunset, a dim interior, or a picture you intend to print, raw is worth switching on. Our smartphone photography workshop covers when it earns its place.
If you want to know what raw looks like in your own camera and editing software, a private lesson can cover file settings, import and a first edit in an hour. Newer camera owners might start with the beginner photography workshop first.
Practise this
- Set your camera to RAW+JPEG and photograph a scene with a bright sky. Pull the highlights down in both files and compare what comes back.
- Photograph the same subject under warm indoor light with white balance on Daylight. Correct both files and compare skin or neutral tones.
- Note the file sizes of one raw and one JPEG from your camera, then work out how many of each fit on your largest memory card.
Questions, answered.
Is RAW better quality than JPEG?
Why do RAW files look dull?
Should beginners shoot RAW or JPEG?
Can you convert a JPEG to RAW?
Published by CapturEDU, Melbourne photography education. Our educators are award-winning photographers with a Master of Arts in Photography (RMIT), AIPP and RPS membership.
